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“Well, this is it. You and me, babe, we’re it,” I tell him.
Bran grins at me before he scoops me up and carries me bridal style into the house. A house he tells me he bought hoping to bring me home to it one day. A house that we will make our home. Where we will build a life and bring our children.
Fumbles and false starts aside, we got to the end zone after all.
EPILOGUE
BRAN
One Year Later…
* * *
“Watch out for the blitz!” her voice shouts above the ruckus and I laugh at her enthusiasm.
Connor is leading his team to another playoff win but she will not let up on him. We sit in the family suite at the stadium, Hailee there shouting with her best friend. Both the ladies give him a hard time, but I never lose faith in him. He always gets the win when his wife and kids are at the game—he is a bit of a showoff, no way he lets his Hails or his littles see him lose.
Sometimes I miss being out there, but I still love watching him play.
When we played together, there was never any doubt that we would win. We spoke without words since we worked together so long, and I always knew to go left when they thought he was going right. It’s why no one could touch me when he threw the ball—they never knew I was his target.
Now we still make a great team—only I work on keeping him healthy so he can play. It took me some time after I joined his training team to figure out where I fit. By training season, I had found my niche, training not just Connor but the entire offensive line in kinesiology techniques that kept their bodies healthy and helped elevate their playing.
For the first time since I hung up my helmet and my cleats, I feel good about what I am doing. I am good at it, good at pinpointing a player's strengths and weaknesses. I was damn good at it on the field and used it to my advantage while I was playing. Now I use it to help them train weaknesses into strengths and amplify their strong suits.
“Wife, come sit,” I bark at her playfully, waggling my brows when she turns to shoot me a warning glare.
Paisley fails to keep that menacing look on her face as she rubs her hand over her little swollen belly. Seeing her pregnant makes me feel a dozen different things. Protective, possessive, and positively hot for her. Her soft tiny stomach growing with my son and her big, ripe tits ready to feed him—and sometimes me—just makes me feel primal and beastly towards her.
My wife loves being pregnant. We got pregnant just a few weeks after I proposed to her. She said she wanted to be married to me as soon as possible and I made it happen two weeks later, with Hails and Connor pulling out all the stops to host it at their place out at The Pillars. After five years apart, we were married and expecting a baby within just a few months.
“Don’t boss me,” she teases even as she crosses the room to sink into my lap. Grinning up at her, I smooth my hand over her little baby bump, bending to kiss at the cute curve of her.
Beside me, Hailee and Connor’s kids sit watching their dad play. Prim, our little girl, sits cooing up at them because Milo and Millie fascinate her. I fear I may have to keep Milo away from her when they get older, he dotes on her and she gives him all her smiles and attention. When she sees me watching her, she pulls her adorable innocent face and wiggles her chubby hands at me.
“Come here little sweetheart,” I coo, reaching for her as my chest warms at the way she smiles up at me.
Adjusting both my girls on my lap, I ignore the game because I know Connor will win. They will head to the NFC championships once again and maybe on to the Superbowl. I will be there with them, carrying on louder than the wives and the cheerleaders. They made it his rookie year but when he took over as starting quarterback, they missed a year. This will be his year. I have faith in him and the team I work with every single day.
“You sure like to cheer for a bunch of sweaty guys in tight pants, babe,” I accuse my wife, though my petty jealousy is much less a threat to us these days. It’s still there. Sometimes, especially with young, charming, attractive guys joining the team I work for regularly, it rears its ugly head.
We still fight, of course. We do love a good argument. Mostly because we love making up afterwards. Make-up sex with my spitfire wife is hot as fuck. Sometimes I think she picks fights just for us to get to the makeup sex. Not that I would complain.
Now, we fight over who gets more snuggles with our daughter, who gets to make breakfast on the weekends, and who picks the movie for our Sunday night movie nights. And sometimes she gets pissed when she comes home to see I bought another piece of her or her friends’ work from the gallery.
“You can’t keep doing that,” she teases me each time, “we don’t have that many walls!”
“We can make this house a gallery. When I see something I like, I want to have it,” I tease her back, taking her in my arms and telling her she’s the one thing I knew I had to have.
That little gallery of hers has been a real special addition to Harmony Hollow. Not only has it allowed my sweet girl to blossom into someone showing the world how to appreciate and support small artists, but it’s given a home to local dreamers. People who were like Paisley and thought they had to seek their dream elsewhere. Now she gives them their dreams right here in our hometown and it’s so beautiful.
Her work has been showcased in tons of shows in Crystal Cove, True Ridge, and even Heart Harbor. Places where she has sold out her showrooms and taken me along with her to relish in the success she has tasted. Before I started going with her, I had never left Harmony Hollow except for a few away football games. Seeing those places had never mattered much to me.
Seeing those places with my wife, that means everything.
Within a few months of selling both dealerships, Brady and Gabe had torn them to the ground. To be honest, seeing them gone was like breathing freely for the first time in a long time. Not just for me, but for my mother and my brothers. We loved dad but he couldn’t ever really love us back and that screwed us all up a little. Getting rid of the last tie to him was a way of healing for us all.
Within a year, they had the museum, a theater, and even a culinary school on the old sites. Those builds and the rest of their investments into the town have been amazing. It has brought so much growth and life back to the Hollow. To think, I was once so jealous of those guys that I almost cost myself my own happiness.
